Method of analyzing seismic data

Abstract

Post-migration common image gathers (CIGs) are generated in a dip angle domain from measured seismic data. From a CIG, a hybrid Radon model is determined, including a reflection model related to concave features in the CIG and a diffraction model related to linear features in the CIG. The reflection model is transformed with a reflection Radon operator applied along inversion trajectories restricted around apices of the concave features to obtain reflection data. The diffraction model is transformed with a diffraction Radon operator to obtain diffraction data. The reflection and diffraction data at different horizontal positions can then be combined and summed to generate a migrated image of the subsurface.

Description

PRIORITY CLAIM[0001]The present application is a National Phase entry of PCT Application No. PCT / IB2011 / 000478, filed Feb. 8, 2011, said application being hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates a method for analyzing seismic data. More specifically, of geophysical prospecting in areas that contain carbonate reservoirs, i.e. where the hydrocarbon containing rocks are carbonate rocks such as limestone, for example.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Carbonate reservoirs are difficult to exploit because of their heterogeneous nature. A major challenge in carbonate environments is therefore to map these heterogeneities which have a strong impact on oil and gas production. In many carbonate reservoirs, the porosity of the rock (i.e. matrix porosity) is high enough to contain large amounts of oil in place, but the permeability is mainly provided by fracture corridors, not by the intrinsic nature of the rock matrix. In...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent describes a method for preserving both specular and non-specular components of a wavefield by limiting the migration aperture in the dip-angle domain. This is done using a modified Radon transform called Limited Aperture Hybrid Radon Transform (LAHRT). The method involves determining a hybrid Radon model associated with the common image gather by minimizing an objective function. This objective function takes into account various factors such as data vectors, diffraction and reflection operators, model space weights, measures of sparseness, and an L2 measure. The technical effect of the method is to provide a more accurate and complete representation of the wavefield, which can be useful in various applications such as optical imaging and diffraction tomography.

Problems solved by technology

Carbonate reservoirs are difficult to exploit because of their heterogeneous nature.

A major challenge in carbonate environments is therefore to map these heterogeneities which have a strong impact on oil and gas production.

Typically, diffracted energy is one or even two orders of magnitude weaker than the reflected one and it is not easy to distinguish diffracted events in a seismic dataset or a diffraction image in a seismic image.

When summing the DA-CIGs to assemble the migrated seismic image, the tails of the smile-shaped reflection features are either annihilated in the migrated image due to destructive optimal summation, or they create migration noise due to aliasing in the data and truncation of the migration aperture.

The migrated images obtained after such processing tend to be over-smoothed and they may thus miss small-scale structural features such as fault planes and steps.

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